Happy Place

by Emily Henry

Across the table, his eyes meet mine. His overgrown hair is damp from the rain, tucked behind his ears. So many of his details are slightly different, but my heart still sees him and whispers into my veins, You. Hearts can be so stupid.

“Between the two of us, I’m the mule.” “Well, if you’re the mule,” Michael says, “then Wyn’s the ass.” “If I’m going to be an ass,” he says, “I’m glad to be yours.”

“Is there one that looks like us?” he asks. They all do, I think. You are in all of my happiest places. You are where my mind goes when it needs to be soothed.

“Everything keeps spinning,” he says in a low, hoarse voice. “But my mind’s always got one hand on you.”

“No,” he says quietly. “In every universe, it’s you for me. Even if it’s not me for you.”

It’s this feeling like the universe is compacting around me, while something in my rib cage is expanding. I’m the culmination of their lost dreams, their missed other lives, and at the same time, they’re proud of me.

I got rid of every single piece of you, like that would make a difference, like I could cut you out of me, and instead, I just see everywhere you’re supposed to be.”

Everything is changing. It has to. You can’t stop time. All you can do is point yourself in a direction and hope the wind will let you get there.

It’s that when I’m not here, I feel like a ghost. Like my skin isn’t solid enough to hold the sunlight, and my hair isn’t there to dance on the breeze.

“You see the best in everyone, and you make the people you love feel like even their flaws are worth appreciating. You love learning. You love sharing what you learn. You try to be fair, to see things from other people’s points of view, and sometimes that makes it hard for you to see them from your own, but you have one. And even when you’re mad at me, I want to be close to you. None of it—none of my favorite things about you, none of what makes you you—has anything to do with a job. That’s not why I love you. It’s not why anyone loves you.”

“A happy potter’s better for this world than a miserable surgeon.”

I know how lucky I am to have you. To have people who love me enough to hold on even when I’m scared to let them close.”

Like even when something beautiful breaks, the making of it still matters.

This is how I used to think of love. As something so delicate it couldn’t be caught without being snuffed out. Now I know better. I know the flame may gutter and flare with the wind, but it will always be there.

Want is a kind of thief. It’s a door in your heart, and once you know it’s there, you’ll spend your life longing for whatever’s behind it.

I’d rather have you five days a year than anyone else all the time. I’d rather argue with you than not talk, and whether we’re together or we’re not, I’m yours, so let’s be together,

understood, then, the immense honor it is to hurt like she does. To have loved someone so much that the taste of maple syrup can make you cry and laugh at the same time.